Save the last Tuesday of every month for tasty fruits of the sea. It’s called “Meet the Fleet.” And you need to make reservations now. The evenings are “wildly successful,“ said John Pappalardo, director of the Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fishermen’s Association.

The Association will make room for you at its headquarters on Route 28 in Chatham to learn about, and eat, wonderful fresh goods such as bluefish and shellfish. They’ll even pour you a glass of wine.

All through the year, the Association will host a last Tuesday event when someone will talk about fishing a species and another expert will talk about cooking and eating it. The Aug. 29 evening will focus on softshell clams. In July, the seafood of the month was bluefish.

At that event, fisherman Tom Smith used photos and narration to tell the capacity audience how he catches blues. Of interest in the videos taken by Nancy Civetta, communications director for the Association, was the way Smith and his crew bang on the deck of their boat to get the attention of the blues, who then swarm into the area around the craft into the nets that are waiting to catch them.

A few of the blues get their throats slit while still alive, said Smith, a technique that leaves a paler, tastier fish. “You can see the blood pumping out of them,” he said. And as he has not been kind to the bluefish, they have returned the favor. He’s had to have two fingers reattached from bites from the famously vicious fish. “They’ll kill just for the sake of it,” said Smith, “and they’ll even regurgitate just so they can eat some more.”

Among the people who attended the July bluefish event were a mother and son from Pittsburgh. Mark and Maryann Anderson, who have a house in Chatham, both said that they love bluefish, although Mark’s wife doesn’t care for it. He was hoping to find a way to cook the fish that might appeal to her.

The recipe of the evening was bluefish cakes done by Lisa Whelan, chef and owner of Dancing Spoons, a catering business in Harwich. She combined fillets with interesting ingredients such as sweet potatoes and sausage, parsley and cilantro, before she pan-fried them and served them with a mango and citrus and tarragon salsa.

What else was new about blues?

Although we think of them as a New England crop, it turns out that both North Carolina and Brazil have huge bluefish industries because those are places where they winter.

Smith said he has the only commercial license to net bluefish on Cape Cod. He also fishes for tuna, and shellfishes in the winter, he told the group. He likes the fishing, he said, and finds that “the hardest part of the day is shoveling ice” to keep the fish fresh for market.

A lifelong fisherman, Smith has seen changes. Every ten years or so, he said, the bluefish population reaches a peak and then drops. He also thinks that Cape Cod Bay has more fresh water in it now because of the Boston outfall pipe.

The change in the water has affected the life in the Bay, but bluefish, said Smith, are still “a healthy resource” which, when they come to Cape Cod in the spring and the fall, keep him working “seven days a week.”

The Aug. 29 “Meet the Fleet” will feature steamers, otherwise known as softshell clams. Pappalardo called the events at the Association’s headquarters on Route 28 in Chatham “a cheap night out” that “brings the community of Cape Cod together with the oldest industry on Cape Cod.”

CORRECTED“Meet the Fleet” is planned for the last Tuesday of every month at 5:30 p.m. RSVP to info@ccchfa.org or 508-945-2432 x 107. Admission is free for Association members and $10 for others, with snacks and beverages included. The Association also has organized a “Chatham Commercial Fisheries Trail” brochure that leads visitors to 19 sites that have played a role in Chatham’s history.